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Josh Donaldson was succinct in his assessment of the Blue Jays’ American League Championship Series loss to Cleveland: “They were better than us.”

That was clear to anyone watching the five-game series as Cleveland picked apart the Jays in almost identical fashion in their four victories. But how did they do it? Knowing won’t make the series loss feel any better, but it might make it easier to understand.

Breaking bad

It was clear early on in the series that Cleveland’s pitching staff was going to attack the Jays with a steady diet of curveballs and sliders to exploit a well-established weakness.

The power-laden Jays’ lineup is a good fastball-hitting team, but they struggled badly against curveballs this season, collectively hitting just .161 against the pitch — the lowest mark in the majors. Against sliders the Jays weren’t as bad, but still middling.

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In Game 2, Josh Tomlin tripled his curveball usage compared to the regular season and he held the Jays to just one run on three hits over 5 2/3 innings. But the emphasis on going after the Jays with breaking balls was team-wide. Corey Kluber threw twice as many sliders against the Jays than he did in the regular season. Andrew Miller, the ALCS MVP, always throws a ton of sliders — more than 60 per cent, in fact — so he just kept doing what he was doing. But elsewhere in Cleveland’s bullpen, every reliever who threw a breaking ball increased their usage against the Jays by a considerable margin.

In terms of scoring runs in the series, the Jays were supposed to have the power edge, while Cleveland would counter with speed and a more multi-faceted offence. But as it turned out, the Indians beat the Jays at their own game.

Cleveland outscored Toronto 12-8 in the five-game series — the lowest scoring ALCS of all-time — and out-homered the Jays 6-2. Five of Cleveland’s six homers were solo shots, with one two-run homer in Game 1, so those runs were the difference. For all the talk of the Jays needing to play more small ball, Cleveland won it with the long ball.

Really, though, this whole series was a pitching duel and the games were won by the guys on the mound.

Lockdown bullpen

Cleveland’s Angel of Death, Andrew Miller, rightfully won the series MVP award after throwing 7 2/3 scoreless innings against the Jays while setting an ALCS strikeout record for relievers with 14. Armed with an almost unhittable slider, the versatile relief ace was responsible for more than 28 per cent of the Jays’ strikeouts.

But he wasn’t alone. Closer Cody Allen and right-handed setup man Bryan Shaw combined for eight innings in the series, while allowing just one earned run.

And thanks to Cleveland manager Terry Francona’s aggressive bullpen deployment, a full one-third of the Jays’ plate appearances in the series came against the stultifying trio of Allen, Miller and Shaw.

Francisco Lindor

Cleveland’s dynamic young shortstop was the best position player in the series for either team and would have won the ALCS MVP if not for Miller’s historic dominance. He had seven hits and three RBIs in the series, both tops among all hitters.

He drove in the winning runs in Games 1 and 2 and was sublime in the field, cleanly playing every ball that was hit to him while turning four double plays. The 22-year-old, who grew up idolizing Roberto Alomar, was Cleveland’s only player who could match Josh Donaldson’s play on both sides of the ball.

Terry Francona

It’s hard to point to any major tactical blunders in the series by John Gibbons — perhaps letting Marcus Stroman face the top of Cleveland’s order a third time in Game 3, which led to Jason Kipnis hitting a game-winning homer, was his biggest error in hindsight — but the experienced Francona certainly aided his team’s effort on multiple fronts, most importantly with the bullpen.

The arms did the work, but Francona never took a single out off. He was at his best in Game 3, when Trevor Bauer made his bloody exit in the first inning and Francona deftly navigated his way through the rest of the game, using six different relievers to get 25 outs and never allowing any of them to face a hitter a second time.

There is also the intangible effect he apparently had on rookie Ryan Merritt in his calming pre-game pep talk before his start in Game 5. It’s no coincidence Francona is now among the few managers who have taken two teams to the World Series.

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